2014 was a big year in social media technology – especially with the launch and rise of the newest platforms and apps.

We started the year 2014 with a new Q&A platform that is more than a simple app. Jelly app (founded by Biz Stone, one of the Twitter co-founders) encourages people to use photos to ask questions and to get answers from within and outside their social networks.

In march we had another interesting and controversial launch of a new social media network called Ello. Ello.co (currently in beta) was created as an ad-free alternative to existing social networks (such as Facebook, Twitter). At it's peak, the social site was processing more than 30,000 signup requests per hour and raised a further $5.5 million in venture capital in October 2014.

The infographic below, created by HotinSocialMedia, takes a closer look at the most important social media news from 2014. Be sure to click on image to see larger version and explore the most talked about stories this year.Click to enlarge+.
If you are interested in separate, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook year in review - their most popular trends and top content from 2014 - then read this post by Ana Hoffman (on LinkedIn Publishing Platform).